Rolling Stone:

Last week Page Six stoked a rumor that Howard Stern is a possible candidate to replace the departing Simon Cowell on next season’s American Idol. Today the shock jock addressed the reports on his satellite radio show, admitting the job wouldn’t be out of the question. “There’s not a better job on the planet than judging a fucking karaoke contest,” Stern said.

…Idol producers are rumored to be considering offering Stern a contract that mirrors his five-year, $500 million deal with Sirius XM, but considering Paula Abdul and Idol split ways over a few million and Cowell will only make a reported $50 million per season to executive produce and judge on The X Factor, that figure seems a little excessive.

…“If I do say so myself, I can’t imagine anyone else but me replacing [Cowell],” Stern said. “I mean, how else are they going to make that show work? Who knows how to broadcast and who knows how to be interesting? And who’s not afraid to speak their mind?”

ME.

Howard Stern? Please. For one thing, the guy has a face for radio. Look, I don’t claim to be Brad Pitt or anything, but I think I can fairly say I’m pleasant-looking — at least compared to Howard Stern (which is hardly bragging; it’s kind of like being taller than Danny DeVito). American Idol is network television. What happens when Howard finds out he can’t make the girls take off their tops if they want to go through to the next round? He’ll lose interest before week two.

So he can be loud and obnoxious—big fucking deal. For that kind of money, I will judge the shit out of those kids. I will be mean enough to make Paula Abdul cry off her permanent eye-liner even though she won’t be there. Plus, I know a hell of a lot more about singing and musicianship than Howard Stern. And Howard doesn’t need the job! He can go right on saying “fuck” on satellite radio, get paid more hundreds of millions than he already has, and his listeners will love it. To hire me, on the other hand, would effectively strike a blow against the recession.

To top it off, I can walk to the Kodak Theater from where I live. That’s right, FOX—you won’t even have to validate my parking. So what are you waiting for? I am the new Simon. Or rather, Simon is the old me. Let’s do this thing.

I’ll give you this, Lost-ies: the first season was pretty good. By the end of the second season, however, I was annoyed. I’ll give it credit for trying something different–and I use “different” here in the strictly value-neutral sense. “Different” is only different until it suddenly isn’t.

FINAL SEASON OF ‘LOST’ PROMISES TO MAKE FANS MORE ANNOYING THAN EVER

That’s the problem with having a show that’s essentially Gilligan’s Island as written by Samuel Beckett: there are no boundaries. Any nonsensical bullshit you throw in can be justified as just another part of the overall enigma. When you give yourself carte blanche to jump and re-jump the shark as many times as you want to, that’s too much dramatic leeway. As I watched, the afore-mentioned overall enigma became not “where is this island?” or “what happened on the island before they got there?” or “that polar bear–what the fuck?” but rather, “why am I still watching this televised non-sequitur when I’ve stopped caring what happens?”

Yet people still keep asking me, “Ohmigod, did you see Lost last night?” Pfft. Whatever.

OK, OK, I’m not going to dis it too hard. Any scripted show that stays on network TV for several seasons is OK with me, even if I am not personally interested in watching. It beats the shit out of another programming hour being sacrificed to Jay Leno, Primetime Live, I Survived a Japanese Game Show or some other flavorless, antiseptic time-filler. Lost has provided work for hundreds of creative professionals in my industry–writers, technicians, designers, not to mention my fellow actors.

The show is automatically worthwhile for having raised the profile of Michael Emerson, who plays Ben Linus; I’ve known that guy deserves to be a star since I first saw him onstage in New York in the mid-’90s. My limited Lost viewing was also enough to make me a fan of Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje (who displayed gravitas out the wazoo as Mr. Eko) and Elizabeth Mitchell, although I’ll admit that I don’t remember anything about her character (JanetJuliet); I recall her because 1) she is smokin’ hot, and 2) in a flashback episode her mother was played by my friend, the thoroughly awesome Amy Stewart).

I did get a kick out of how Lost fans’ mini-hysteria over the possibility of their show being pre-empted made national news:

Enjoy the last season of your mind-fucking tele-fetish, Lost-ophiles, but remember: you have no right to ever give me a hard time about being a Twin Peaks fan. Unless, I suppose, you are equally willing to admit that you maintained allegiance to your show even after it had begun to suck.

Normally, I look forward to screener season. Woohoo—free movies! At least once a year, for a few weeks, my SAG dues seem to deliver a tangible benefit.

Last night was my first viewing of any of the four screeners I have (thus far) received, and it was not an auspicious beginning. Up in the Air looks like it might be a pretty enjoyable movie. Might be, that is–I couldn’t say for sure, because the DVD I got is either a faulty reproduction or some kind of Special Jigsaw Puzzle/MadLibs/stoned Director’s Cut edition.

My DVD’s rendering began with a phone call scene between the George Clooney and Vera Farmiga characters, in which she reprimands him for having transgressed the boundaries of what apparently had been their rather casual relationship. Cut to George in the office of his boss Jason Bateman, who lets him know that someone named Natalie has quit. Cut to George receiving his 10-million-miler status card during a flight, complete with congratulatory announcement from the flight attendant and a special sit-down visit from the pilot (Sam Elliott). Cut to aforementioned Natalie character (Anna Kendrick) taking a picture of George holding a cardboard cutout of his sister and soon-to-be-brother-in-law in front of the St. Louis Airport terminal.

“Wow,” I thought, “they’re really going all-out with this whole non-linear narrative thing. But why are the edits so abrupt? Like, with some of them coming in mid-sentence?”

Soon enough, even my slow uptake had sussed out the situation. If nothing else, I knew things were fucked up when the end credits started rolling at the 50 minute mark. Two-thirds of the way through the movie I made it to the opening titles sequence. Following that, I came across a couple of scenes I’d already seen earlier; I kept watching them just to see if they added any layers of meaning the second time through. I was half hoping they’d pull some kind of Groundhog Day thing where the scene would take a left turn and end up somewhere different than it had the previous time, but no such luck.

And then, all of a sudden, it was over. I think. The last thing I saw was Kendrick giving an auto industry middle manager the axe via Skype, and the guy yelling, “What the fuck is this?!?” Not an entirely inappropriate button for the end of my viewing experience. For a second I thought the screener was going to tell me that all the answers I needed about my future SAG Awards voting options would be found in the glossy packet it was printing out for me. If it had done that, I might have had to vote for the movie in every category out of admiration for its ballsy marketing-fu. Missed opportunity, Paramount.

Now I’m left to contemplate whether to cast votes for Clooney (Best Actor), Farmiga or Kendrick (both nominated for Best Supporting Actress). Part of me wants to ignore them all as retribution for Paramount’s not bothering to send me a proper screener. This would of course be an entirely wasted gesture of principle, since I seriously doubt that the studio would ever find out I had done so, or even if it did, would give a shit. There’s also no sense in punishing my three fellow thespians for the situation, since I’m quite sure that awards-screener quality control was not among their contractual responsibilities (if it was, they need to fire their agents).

I guess I’ll have to re-assess after I’ve seen the other performances. I can only hope that none of my other screeners were recorded on “shuffle.”

Jeff Chen recently asked, “Since everybody else is making lists of their top ten films of the decade, does that mean I have to, too?” I wouldn’t presume to speak for him, but my own answer to the same rhetorical question is a sheepish “yes.” Jeff ended up making his list, too, although I don’t know how sheepish he felt about it.

Anyway, here are my top ten…nah, screw it—twelve favorite movies of the decade just completed, i.e., 2000-2009.

1. Dogville (2004)

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   Mike D’Angelo, The Man Who Viewed Too Much:

   Inevitably, von Trier’s spartan aesthetic has American critics citing Our Town, but in both method and spirit Dogville has much more in common with Brecht’s The Good Woman of Setzuan (written in Denmark, ironically), another sorrowful disquisition on the mercenary aspects of human nature. Anything this ostentatiously artificial demands to be read as allegory, of course, and charges of anti-Americanism aren’t entirely groundless — certainly the film is very, very critical of the way that the U.S. treats its underclass, and to argue that Von Trier isn’t entitled to feel that disgust without having set foot in the continental 48 is patently absurd.

2. Capturing the Friedmans (2003)

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   Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader:
   

   If Capturing the Friedmans were less shapely and less of a masterpiece, I’d find it less troubling. Both times I’ve seen it I’ve felt that by the end practically everyone associated with the film seems tarnished in one way or another: the ostensible subjects (the Friedmans, an upper-middle-class Jewish family in the Long Island town of Great Neck), the members of their community who helped destroy much of their lives, the filmmakers, and the audience. We’re all tainted by the graphic exposure of family wounds, diminished by what we think and feel–and by what we don’t think and don’t feel.

3. The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-2003)

   
   Trailers: Fellowship Towers Return
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   Jeffrey Chen, LVJeffrey’s Window to the Movies:

   Thinking about this trilogy, I ponder over the strange dynamics of its journey to the screen. Peter Jackson and his team of wizards had already set themselves up with the first two movies — they were instantly beloved, receiving more praise from critics and public alike than most movies could ever dream of having. Naturally, the demand would be for the third episode to match the same heights. Even if Jackson only needed to deliver a movie that simply met expectations, he’d already have to create something quite special. Thus, the successful effectiveness of the final film should be an astonishing feat — we anticipate nothing less. It’s like putting Jackson on a golf course and telling him 18 hole-in-ones is par for the course.

   But he did it.

4. Before Sunset (2004)

   
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   Scott Tobias, The A.V. Club:

   When Hawke first beckoned Delpy off the train in [this film's 1995 prequel] Before Sunrise, he lured her with a half-sincere, half-smoke-and-mirrors speech about how she should take a chance or else feel some doubt in her romantic future. Though it seemed like a harmless come-on at the time, those words carry an achingly ironic resonance in Before Sunset, when the renewed pleasure they take in each other’s company only deepens their regret about where life has steered them. Shooting in long takes, [director Richard] Linklater and his actors (who get co-screenwriting credit) allow the conversation to curlicue effortlessly from literate banter to matters of the heart, and sometimes to places in between. And, in the spirit of the original, Linklater closes with one of the best endings of its kind since George Romero’s Martin.

5. Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) (2006)

   
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   Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times:

   [Writer/director Florian Henckel] von Donnersmarck has set his film in the East Germany of 1984, five years before the Berlin Wall collapsed. It was a time when the terrifying Stasi, the secret police, made it their business to use an extensive network of spies and surveillance to know every secret thing about their citizens. Unlike other German films, most notably 2004′s landmark Goodbye, Lenin, Lives is hardly an exercise in what’s called “Ostalgia”–nostalgia for the good old days of the East. Instead it is an inside look at how a surveillance society, set up to discover and prey upon human weakness, has the ability to make everyone a potential suspect and destroy everything it touches. The Lives of Others does all this beautifully, but it is too well-acted a film, too meticulously plotted and carefully directed, to be satisfied with that alone. It’s also finally too smart to be content with telling anything like a familiar story.

6. Y Tu Mamá También (And Your Mama Too) (2002)

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   Peter Rainer, New York Magazine:

   We’ve all seen (or consciously avoided seeing) plenty of Hollywood comedies about horny teens, but the two Mexican 17-year-olds in this film, Tenoch (Diego Luna) and Julio (Gael García Bernal), are perhaps the freest and most closely observed of their species to ever grace the screen. Y Tu Mamá También is like a Bill-and-Ted movie made by a true artist, and this in itself is a great joke.

7. Mulholland Dr. (2001)

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   Bryant Frazer, Deep Focus:

   Mulholland Dr. could be described as a movie about a dream about Hollywood. The audio design, credited to [writer/director David] Lynch, throbs with amplified ambient sound that suggests not just the ever-present noise of the city, but also, by literally surrounding the viewer, the expansive and unexplored spaces inside one’s own head. The helicopter shots peering straight down between skyscrapers as the booming sound of the city fills the movie theater are incredibly eerie, capturing the uneasy feeling of being alone, downtown, in the middle of the night.

   In collaboration with cinematographer Michael Deming, Lynch bathes his images in unease. His camera can best be described as floating, often moving vertically within a scene and looking down upon the characters, or sucking us forward into a point-of-view that we’re not sure we want to share.

8. Traffic (2000)

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   Jeff Vorndam, AboutFilm.com:

   What Traffic achieves, and what makes it a great, landmark film is that it acknowledges our culpability and how at odds we are with the avowed intent to eradicate drugs. Our society creates this problem with its insatiable demand for drugs, be they heroin, alcohol, tobacco, or diet pills. We love the stuff, and refusing to look ourselves in the eye short-circuits any plans to attack the side effects. One should ask, after viewing the film, if the side effects should be attacked at all, or if efforts are better spent treating the necessary ills that accompany our thirsts.

   I’m speaking in this broad sense because that’s where the film is strongest. I’ve read the complaints about the story timeline and the portrayals of certain characters, and they are not without merit, but in the end they make little difference to me because the totality of the film is so utterly moving. Some have said it’s not telling us anything we didn’t already know about the War on Drugs. Well, The Insider didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know about smoking–which is to say, it’s beside the point.

   Traffic isn’t a message movie, it’s a movie about a state of being. It’s about being hopelessly incapable of affecting real change. It’s a state of besiegement, frustration, and resignation. Finally, it is a state of dogged optimism.

9. Bloody Sunday (2002)

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   MaryAnn Johanson, The Flick Filosopher:

   On a gray January Sunday in 1972, in Derry, Northern Ireland, British soldiers opened fire with live ammunition on unarmed, peaceful demonstrators, killing 13. Shocking and visceral, writer/director Paul Greengrass’s documentary-style re-creation of the horrifying events of that day pulls no punches, bluntly depicting the powder-keg atmosphere of the city: the disquieting enthusiasm of the British troops on the streets, tired of taking the brunt of local ire and itching for a fight; the disdain of the British major general on the scene (Tim Pigott-Smith, weaselly perfection), dismissing civil-rights protestors as “hooligans”; the zeal of the people of Derry, led by the local MP (James Nesbitt, energetic and passionate), unwilling to back down in their own city.

10. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)

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    Vern, Then Fuck You, Jack: The Life and Art of Vern:

    To me the highly acclaimed picture Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is not so much about fighting as it is about love and woman empowerment and graceful movement. It’s more like a musical or one a them tapdancing movies they made back then with all the singing and umbrellas and what not. And I ain’t making excuses like the other critics, because I’d RATHER say it was a kung fu movie, and I loved it. But facts are facts, and this is a tap dancing movie. I ain’t complainin though cause it’s the best tap dancing movies I seen in years.

    My man [Chow Yun] Fat gets to perform stunts like I never seen him before, because he’s doing all kinds of kung fu and great swordsmanshipping. In case you don’t know not all chinese dudes know kung fu, and I never seen Fat do it before. Always using guns. Maybe a punch now and then but very rarely kicking. Here he’s flyin around like a god damn superman, flippin the swords around like WHISH WHISH WHISH and who the fuck even KNOWS what some a those weapons are called that he’s using. These guys know how to USE the things, we americans can’t even NAME them. That’s how far ahead of us Fat is.

    But like I said, this is a tapdancing movie. Not a Badass movie. And Fat is one fuck of a tapdancer.

11. Almost Famous (2000)

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    Dana Stevens, New York Times:

    In Almost Famous, a loose, affectionate look back on his earlier career as a teenage music journalist, [Cameron] Crowe has devoted a whole movie to the love of rock ‘n’ roll. The soul he lays open — a sweet, forgiving and generous one — is his own. The movie follows the adventures of William Miller (Patrick Fugit), a San Diego 15-year-old whose fairy-tale ascendance from nerdy schoolboy to Rolling Stone reporter mirrors Mr. Crowe’s own life story. But Mr. Crowe is less interested in biographical or historical literalism — he freely mixes real and fictional characters and prefers period atmosphere to period detail — than in evoking the joyful, reckless, earnest energy of rock in the years between 60′s idealism and punk nihilism.

    He may be the least cynical director working in Hollywood today. In his hands this coming-of-age story is as much about the preservation of William’s innocence as its loss; the music William loves protects him even as his involvement with it introduces him to all manner of worldly corruption.

12. You Can Count on Me (2000)

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    Nick Davis, Nick’s Flick Picks:

    Have I failed at all to make You Can Count on Me sound like the warm, hilarious, moving story it is? It is the sort of film which I so poignantly hope people will see that I wish there were a sure-fire way to motivate you. I could go on about the wonders worked by [Laura] Linney, [Mark] Ruffalo, and even the young [Rory] Culkin, who is easily the least precious and therefore most winning of his brood. They disappear so completely into their gorgeously written parts that no one seems to be acting, just being. The cast is so confident with their roles that Lonergan, a playwright and screenwriter (Analyze This) making a very assured debut as a director, takes them everywhere with equally persuasive results: broad comedy, light romance, fisticuffs, apologies.

A Few Stats About the Top 12

• Movies released 2005-2009: 1
• Single year with most films on the list: 2000 (4)
• Movies in a language other than English: 3
• English-language movies by non-US filmmakers: 3
• Movies I currently own on DVD: 6
• Of those, sweetest and most tricked-out DVD: The Lord of the Rings Platinum Series (Special Extended Edition)
• Cheeriest: Almost Famous
• Least cheery: Dogville
• Most likely to have been seen: The Lord of the Rings
• Least likely to have been seen: Probably Dogville, and will probably remain so (see above, “least cheery”)
• Baddest muthafucka: Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh) in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
• Longest above-the-line name: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, writer/director of The Lives of Others
• How arbitrary the numerical rankings feel to me upon reflection: very
• Reportedly awesome 2000-2009 movies I haven’t seen: dozens
• Close, but no cigar: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Rachel Getting Married, A History of Violence, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, 25th Hour, No Country for Old Men, Memento, The Hurt Locker, Little Children, The 40 Year Old Virgin, All the Real Girls, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Letters from Iwo Jima, Brokeback Mountain

So, how wrong am I? How suspect is my taste? Lay it on me in the comments.

The moment you’ve all been waiting for has arrived. Here it is, the thrilling conclusion of the quiz from Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule which I began in the post before this one. Let’s get right to the action:

1. Best Film of 1979.
   Absolutely, definitely, unequivocally Manhattan.



2. Most realistic and/or sincere depiction of small-town life in the movies.
   The one that made the biggest impression on me was All the Real Girls.
3. Best horror movie creature (non-giant division).
   Hurh? How big can a creature be and still be “non-giant?” …Whatever, I’ll avoid making a call on that by going with the creepy little thing outside John Lithgow’s airplane window in Twilight Zone: The Movie. And yes, nerds, I’m aware that it was based on an episode of the old TV show where the passenger was played by William Shatner. I’ve seen it, and it’s not scary — the monster was, by the look of it, nothing more than a guy in a gorilla suit. That’s not menacing, it’s comical! In the Lithgow version, though, it’s this bug-eyed, slimy reptilian thing that zips around really fast and pops up right in your face. It looks like it really could claw apart the wing and bring down the plane. I was a kid when I saw the movie in the theatre, and that lizard thing freaked my shit out.
4. Second-favorite Francis Ford Coppola film.
   The Godfather (behind only The Godfather: Part II).
5. Name a one-off movie that could have produced a franchise you would have wanted to see.
   A tough one, because I’m a little weary of movie franchises. You know what? I think I could be psyched for a sequel to Heathers, updated to flip the bird to the pretensions of a later time period. Obviously you wouldn’t have the three Heathers anymore, but so what. All that’s important are the Veronica (Winona Ryder) and J.D. (Christian Slater) characters, and the misanthropic comedy. And yes, musical theatre nerds, I’m aware that they’re adapting Heathers into a Broadway musical. I’d be more intrigued by it if I weren’t depressed by the fact that the only new musicals that get produced on Broadway are stage adaptations of movies. It’s almost enough to make me wish Andrew Lloyd Webber would stumble across another book of poems. Almost. As for the show I predict will be daringly titled Heathers: The Musical, I’ll admit that I did get a kick out of the news that it will include a number called “I Love My Dead Gay Son.”
6. Favorite sequence from a Brian De Palma film.
   I’ve gotta say the prom humiliation/revenge sequence from Carrie. De Palma is sometimes guilty of over-indulging in cinematic flashiness, but the Carrie scene directly called for DePalma’s whole bag of movie magic tricks. And oh, did he bring it: He pulls out slow motion, swelling lyrical music, split screen, trippy kaleidoscopic image and sound editing, and his trademark buckets of blood (in an actual bucket, no less). Put it all together and you’ve got a mini-opera, a dream-turned-nightmare-turned-explosion-of-supernatural-vengeance. Bravura filmmaking, and totally badass.
7. Favorite moment in three-strip Technicolor.
   The dream ballet from Singin’ in the Rain.
   
8. Favorite Alan Smithee film.
   Where Alan Smithee credits are concerned, I think “favorite” is really not the right word. In any case, the only Smithee-credited film I’ve seen is the first segment of the afore-mentioned Twilight Zone: The Movie, on which the 2nd A.D. “smitheed” after actor Vic Morrow was killed during the filming of an action sequence.
9. Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) or Morris Buttermaker (Walter Matthau)?
   Excuse me? Crash all the way! I’m putting the signs down, Meat. Just follow the signs.
10. Best post-Crimes and Misdemeanors Woody Allen film.
    Bullets Over Broadway. See also the “Part I” post of this quiz re: Jennifer Tilly as Olive Neal.
11. Best Film of 1999.
    Magnolia, hands down.
12. Favorite movie tag line.
    The Fly. Concise, effective, and as it turned out, sticky enough to become part of the general pop culture lexicon.
13. Favorite B-movie western.
    Does Silverado count? Yeah. I say it does.
14. Overall, the author best served by movie adaptations of her or his work.
    Margaret Mitchell, since to my knowledge only the one book of hers was made into a movie.
15. Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn) or Irene Bullock (Carole Lombard)?
    I at this time must invoke my right under the fifth amendment to avoid the possibility of, in a manner of speaking, incriminating myself, or at least revealing the depths of my cinematic illiteracy vis-a-vis Bringing Up Baby and My Man Godfrey.
16. Favorite musical cameo in a non-musical movie.
    The only one I can think of at the moment is Dooley Wilson’s iconic rendition of “As Time Goes By” in Casablanca.
17. Bruno (the character, if you haven’t seen the movie, or the film, if you have): subversive satire or purveyor of stereotyping?
    I haven’t seen it, so I’ll say subversive satire. From what I hear, seeing the movie might change my mind, though.
18. Five film folks, living or deceased, you would love to meet.
    I have a hard time answering this kind of question, for the extremely trite reason that there are so, so many people in the history of the movies whose work I admire greatly and whom I would love to meet. Therefore, these five feel quite arbitrary, because I could name dozens of others whom I’d be just as pleased to meet. Anyway, I’ll say Billy Wilder, Meryl Streep, Maggie Smith, Groucho Marx, and Peter O’Toole. The first three simply due to my profound admiration for their body of work, and the last two partly for the same reason but even more because were/are delightful raconteurs. Here’s a little example of the kind of anecdote I’d hope to hear, from a 1993 interview of O’Toole by Terry Gross on NPR’s “Fresh Air.” As the clip begins, he’s been talking about the filming of Lawrence of Arabia.